KUCHING & BAKO!

Kuching is on the southwest coast of Sarawak, one of two Malaysian states on the Island of Borneo. The island of Borneo is subdivided between territories of Indonesia: Brunei and Malaysia. The vast majority of our time was spent between the two Malay states Sarawak and Sabah. Thailand and Cambodia drew our interest as travel destinations for their cultural offerings and food, whereas we were excited for Borneo's wealth of jungle, caving, and wildlife viewing opportunities. Kuching provided us with a metropolitan gateway to launch into our jungle explorations. It also provided us with a cheap and comfortable place to catch our collective breaths after blitzing through Bangkok and Cambodia at breakneck speed.

The first important thing to note about our arrival in Borneo is that we had survived our first flight on Air Malaysia without disappearing from the face of the earth (we would both end up with some moderate food sickness...all is all a win, I'd say). The second thing worth noting is how good at speaking English people from Kuching are. Everyone from cab drivers with disgustingly long pinky nails to laundry experts to your everyday group of ladies wearing hijabs and doing Zumba on the esplanade spoke the best English of anywhere we've been on our trip. True story, we really did run into a group of ladies doing Zumba on the esplanade. Beyond the impeccable English, the general friendliness of the average passerby was unrivaled in this place and quite inspiring to how a city can be so kind and engaging to outsiders.

Our time in Kuching was not the most eventful in part due to dealing with post-Malaysian Air stomach bugs (even if you don't die or disappear a part of you wants to) and we were back in the days of fighting with the Internet to get this damn blog online...for way too long...mostly Stacey. We have since largely given up this fight when the Internet tends to be shitty, which it pretty much always does in Malaysia and Indonesia(with the exception of Ubud...great internet and totally solid Mexican food...more on that much later...definitely not for at least a month).

Our SubLIME Stay at the Limetree Hotel:

Taking a theme so far that it becomes a joke is a really good time. In this particular scenario the theme is limes (oh, you didn't know limes could be a theme?) and the setting is a hotel. Here's a quick rundown: We walk in the front doors and there is green up lighting and green accents everywhere. "Hi, welcome to the Limetree Hotel! Please join us for a welcome drink in the Sublime Cafe.” Yeah, it's homemade lime soda. Oh, what's that you want the wifi password? That'd be: limelife. Why don't you get freshened up with some of our kaffir lime infused shampoo and meet us at the Limelight to discuss your upcoming plans in Kuching? B-lime-y mate!!!

Boothangs in upgraded suite post Bako trip...Illin'!

BAKO NATIONAL PARK:

Bako National Park was to be our first jungle/wildlife experience to justify me paying $650 for the privilege of lugging around a 9 pound hunk of plastic, metal and glass around for 2 months (too obtuse? It's a 600mm camera lens). Bako is located a 45 minute public bus ride and 30 minute boat ride up the coast from Kuching. There are no roads that lead directly to the park, which in addition to heavy equatorial rainfall is the reason why an area with large tracts primary growth rainforest is able to exist such close proximity to a capital city.

The bus stop to Bako was an unmarked gazebo-thang near the esplanade about a 10 minute walk from the Limetree. Our stop was the last one on the line and even showed us the courtesy of having a sign that said "Gateway to Bako"...in other words kiddie pool shit. We boarded the boat a few ringgit (great word and currency!!!) later and road along a beautiful stretch of mangrove laden coast until we reached the jutting limestone (or sandstone...I'm a geology scrub) cliff signifying the beginning of national park land. Skirting the front of the park headquarters we observed several wild boars gallivanting along the beach, good omen.

We really didn't do much fucking around before we found ourselves swallowing metric tons of mosquitos while marveling at our abilities to not fall off moss laden boardwalks when confronted by unannounced jungle grunting sounds. Our initial survey yielded long tailed macaque troops, wild hogs and piglets, lots of bird sounds and unidentified fly-bys and so much frickin' sweat. Signs pointed us 650m (i.e. Not far at all) to a view point overlooking the ocean, it was a grueling ascent for a modest midday return. We maxed out, took some pictures and dropped my lens cap off ravines several times before being joined by a sweatless guide (jerk, only for the sweatlessness) and the family of a 10 year old Malaysian ping pong phenom in Kuching for a tournament. His Asian dad pushed a brutal platform of high expectations and ping pong training discipline cloaked as casual vacation birdwatching talk for the majority of our interaction. Way stellar!!!

On the way back down I fell twice, but was unscathed. We witnessed the interaction of clashing troupes of macaques and proboscis monkeys before we encountered this insane chiller of a schlong-nosed fool. A real compliant winner of a photo subject:

There was also a lute of cute baby monkey action going on around the headquarters.

We checked into our musty little cheapo room hooked up by the parks service. It had an awesome trash receptacle that was a can with the bottom cut out glued to a hole in floor....welcome to the year 2417! We smelled hella bad and took some showers after I scanned the room for evil lurking spiders that wanted to jump Stacey. In this case there were two...the cooperative one was humanely released outside, while the runner was crushed by the power of my flying Chaco. I felt like a monster for the entirety of my 45 second shower. At this point we began our first futile attempt at drying our stank wet clothes in the humid ass jungle...Spoiler alert: they stay hella wet and retain 98.4% of their fonk in thorough double-blind clinical studies...abandon all hope.

That night Stacey helped my get fitted out for a night hike with my Sola 2000 scuba torch affixed to my waterproof camera backpack via joby gorilla pod. In each pocket I carried a flash with which I planned to illuminate my photo subjects after focusing on them via the sola 2000. I also had a head lamp and by all metrics known to humankind, looked extremely cool. Stacey abstained from the night hike as spiders were a big ticket item. Three minutes out the door and it started bucketing rain. The flashes and camera went in the waterproof backpack and I didn't even bother putting on my rain coat, there was no hope. As an aside, rain jackets in the jungle and Southeast Asia in general are a waste of space. If it looks like it's going to rain buy a shitty poncho if you want to go outside or stay inside...or say to hell with it and greet your destiny of smelling like mildewy bum for eternity with enthusiastic aplomb. I chose to carry the rain jacket, not use it and smell mildewy for eternity. Super solid logic.

The path turned into a literal river, then we hid in a small cave full of critters Stacey would have hated and I let my camera equipment brave the soggy conditions while capturing these shots. I returned home after soaking another outfit and Stacey was really nice to me.

Stacey note: While laying on my safe island of a bed evading bad guys attempting to focus on my book, I was sure Evan had died in the intense storm that began upon his departure. I eventually took an Advil PM and had a beer to chill out.

The next day we/I had the brilliant idea of hiking to a waterfall in the rain for five hours over slippery roots on a trail that turned into a river that was more impressive than the waterfall we hiked to. But before we hit the waterfall trail we had a nice little run in with some long-tailed macaques:

There were pitcher plants. I sprained my ankle. We were soaked to the fucking bone and had to run through knee deep ocean waves to catch our boat back to Kuching. It was hilariously ok and a great trial of our ability to stay positive during and after mediocre hikes in the pouring rain while carrying expensive heavy camera equipment that they can't use. Thus here's a shitty, rain blotched Gopro video of our journey because that little mf'er is waterproof.

SEMENGOH ORANGUTAN REHABILITATION CENTER:

We took a cab there and found out it was fruit season, so the Orangutans were picking fruit in the further reaches of the jungle, which is an important orangutan rehab skill. Props to them for that. We saw literally no signs of Orangutans, but managed to hear some extremely half-assed attempts at orangutan calls by the curators. I wish I had recorded them. We also saw a crocodile in captivity eat a chicken.

STEPHANIE, VINCE, AND THE DRAGONFRUIT TAUK:

By far the best thing to come out of our trip to Semengoh came about on our walk back toward the main road to catch bus. We never caught that bus, instead we were set upon by a couple of folks/angels who pulled up in a crossover SUV to offer us a ride. They were Stephanie and Vince, and it was immediately unclear how they knew each other or came to be in the car together. It was also unclear whether they offered is a ride back to the bus stop (3 minute ride) or to Kuching (50 minutes). Being the consummate entitled white guy in our travel brigade of two, I assumed they meant Kuching and happily obliged with the caveat that Stephanie had a few errands to run en route. Errands in a foreign country=potential authentic cultural experience.

Stephanie is a super sweet 20-something from Kuching and Vince is a Frenchie traveling around Southeast Asia with surfing as his primary objective. His sister lives in Kuching, and she and her Malay husband opened a hip café, so Vince took the free lodging opportunity to crash at his sister’s with her 5 dogs. Somehow he and Stephanie crossed paths and became fast friends.

Anyway, Stephanie’s character was evident very quickly, beginning with her ride offer, then continued to show itself through the various errands we ran with her. First, she picked her little sister up from her last day of high school (her sister seemed oddly unphased about the fact that there were three random white people in the car, as if this is Stephanie’s routine), then off to pick up her cousin, dropped off cousin and sister, and finally after a thorough tour of Kuching, took us to our hotel. Oh yea, she also invited us out that night to drink Ruak (a local distilled rice wine a la sake) and to pick us up.

That night, Stephanie swooped us up and we were off to BAR where we ordered passion fruit ruak and quite a few beers. Clearly we are a bit too acclimated to hard alcohol because the ruak slid down the gullet super easily, whereas Stephanie made a face as if she just shot 151. The point of this long segue about Stephanie and Vince is that at this point in our travels, Evan and I had not really met any travel friends (we’re not the Khao San Road party friend types) until Stephanie graciously offered to give us a lift. Evan and I continued to talk about Stephanie throughout our travels. She even wished us a happy new year via What’s App! What a gal. Really, it just made Egon and I want to be kinder, more outgoing people. We complain about finding it difficult to meet new friends at our age, but there is really nothing wrong with just being super nice and seeing what happens. Sure, it is a bit more difficult to spot tourists in the Bay Area since it is a melting pot, but who cares? I’d rather meet new local friends anyway. Props to you, Stephanie and Vince! Sadly, we suck at photographing people and did not get a group shot...

We did capture a few other photos, however. Check them out in the Kuching & Bako Gallery!